. Alewife Reservation & Alewife Brook master plan. Wetlands; Wetland conservation. the colonists those lands that would later be- come the towns of Charlestown, Cambridge, and Watertown, in return for a small annual gift of corn and title to her wigwam overlook- ing Mystic Pond. Given the proximity of the Alewife area to the developing towns of Boston and Charlestown, and the rich upland soils found around the pe- rimeter of the tidal marsh, the area was used from the earliest days of European settlement in the Bay Colony. Soon to be referred to by the colonists as the "Great Swamp,&q
. Alewife Reservation & Alewife Brook master plan. Wetlands; Wetland conservation. the colonists those lands that would later be- come the towns of Charlestown, Cambridge, and Watertown, in return for a small annual gift of corn and title to her wigwam overlook- ing Mystic Pond. Given the proximity of the Alewife area to the developing towns of Boston and Charlestown, and the rich upland soils found around the pe- rimeter of the tidal marsh, the area was used from the earliest days of European settlement in the Bay Colony. Soon to be referred to by the colonists as the "Great Swamp," the first inroads into the area were to es- tablish the common graz- ing land on Black With the growth in popu- lation of Newtowne (now Cambridge), more of the marsh was ditched and drained, first for pas- ture land, and later for orchards. The last farm persisted until the early 1950s on what is now the Acorn Office Park. The first cartways penetrated the Great Swamp in the 17th century, linking FIGURE 9. This historic map of the Alewife Brook shows ~ i-i • i r- i 'ts meandering course prior to channelization and Cambridge with Concord, straightening. Later, the British fled from the skirmishes at Concord and Lexington across the Alewife Brook at the current site of the Massachusetts Avenue bridge. slaughterhouses, glue factories, and transporta- tion staging areas sprang up along the banks of Alewife Brook and were integral to supporting the cattle drives and markets that took place nearby at Porter Square. Ice harvesting at Fresh and Spy Ponds became one of the first inter- national business ventures of the newly inde- pendent country, the ice being shipped around the world. However, it was the thick deposits of alluvial clay beneath the Great Swamp — a product of the last ice age — that would spawn the industry that would most transform the entire Ale- wife landscape. From the middle of the 19th century through the first decades of the 20th century, nume
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